The Manufacture of Salt [pp. 793-794]

THE MANUFACTURE OF SALT.
THE MANUFACTURE OF SALT.
Mr. Thomassy, whom we have already mentioned as being
desirous of establishing a salt manufactory in the neighborhood of New Orleans, published some weeks since an interesting account of the nature of salt in the Albany (New York)
Evening Journal. This article is equally applicable to the
south, where the greater power of evaporation in the air fully
compensates for the deficiency in the same quality of the
water. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico possess from three
to three and a half per cent. of salt-the same as those of
the Mediterranean, where this business has been carried on
with great success. Mr. Thomassy is of opinion that the
establishment of a manufactory of this kind could not fail to
be profitable. We have great pleasure in subjoining the communication to which we have alluded:
The United States are in the world, perhaps, the richest
country in salt springs and mineral salt of every description;
and they, however, are importing, each year, about twelve
million bushels of foreign salt, and for such importation paying two or three millions of dollars.
In the United States the State of New York is especially
rich in salt springs having twelve, fifteen or eighteen per cent.
of salt; and still this State imports annually two or three
million bushels of foreign salt fbr the interior consumption,
when France and Italy, having only three or four per cent. of
salt in their sea water, are manufacturing, with a brine so
weak, a quantity of salt sufficient not only for themselves, but
for a large exportation.
Why then are the United States, and especially the leading
State of New York, so backward in the manufacture of a product of prime and vital necessity? I do not now enter upon
an explanation of the cause of this; but I shall submit on this
matter the result of my own experience.
Everywhere in the south of France the salt, made by solar
and natural evaporation, is a great deal cheaper than when
made in boilers by artificial heat, and this solar salt costs, for
the 100 kilogrammes of 232 pounds, (four bushels,) eight or
nine cents. The actual cost of salt to the manufacturer in
the s.uth of France, in the last twenty years, is consequently,
per each bushel, about two cents. This fact is of public
notoriety; and by some new improvements in salt works,
which I myself introduced in Italy in 1848, the bushel was
produced for only one and a half cents from the brine of the
Adriatic sea, which has about two and a half per cent. of salt.
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